What is Biden’s green energy policy. Wsj report
Does Biden, like Trump, want to lead the private sector? The deepening of the Wall Street Journal
Donald Trump abused his national security power by imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to support domestic producers. Now President Biden is stealing from his predecessor's industrial policy manual by invoking the Defense Production Act to promote national green energy. Don't laugh: the White House wants to produce solar panels and heat pumps to stop Vladimir Putin.
As a rare piece of good news, the President on Monday made US solar developers breathe a sigh of relief by announcing that he will not impose tariffs for two years on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia. Domestic manufacturers say their Chinese competitors are bypassing anti-dumping duties, and a Commerce Department investigation has threatened to drive up the costs of solar projects where US companies add value.
Biden's tariff truce is good news for consumers, although the Commerce Department's investigation will continue, so it can keep the fiction that it's not politically influenced. Most of the investigations into dumping are. This was promoted by Congressional Democrats, most notably Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Congressman Tim Ryan.
Solar panels became a commodity when the Chinese discovered how to produce them at a lower cost. Low-cost imports have helped stimulate US solar production, but they have also created a political and economic paradox for Democrats that Biden is now trying to solve, writes the WSJ .
Liberals promise green energy will create hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to replace those killed by their war on fossil fuels. But many of these jobs will be created in countries with lower labor and energy costs. For this reason Biden turns to the Defense Production Act to promote national companies.
This Cold War-era law gives the President broad emergency powers to mobilize domestic producers to produce goods he deems essential to national security. Biden ironically argues that the energy problems created by left-wing climate policies are a national emergency that requires a solution on command. According to the White House, boosting domestic production of solar panels, heat pumps, building insulation, fuel cells and power transformers can reduce "the risks to our electricity grid."
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation recently warned that most of the United States could experience power outages this summer. The blame lies with green energy subsidies which have forced the shutdown of fossil and nuclear fuel generators that provide basic energy 24/7. Relying on electric heat pumps and solar panels will make the grid less reliable. .
Biden also says the DPA can help save Europe from Putin's energy extortion. "With a stronger clean energy arsenal, the United States can be an even stronger partner for our allies, especially in the face of Putin's war in Ukraine," says the White House. But solar panels and heat pumps won't be able to heat Europeans this winter.
Europe needs more natural gas and the United States needs more pipelines and terminals to export it. But the removal of regulatory barriers to building these infrastructures is not part of the President's order. Biden does not explain how he will use the DPA, but says it will "bring together industry, labor, environmental justice and other stakeholders."
One such "stakeholder", climate alarmist Bill McKibben, a few days after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, urged Biden to invoke the DPA to build green energy factories as FDR did to build weapons in the Second War World. McKibben wants the President to "incentivize domestic manufacturers" and "purchase and install equipment in private industrial facilities to achieve the necessary production targets."
Let's hope Biden doesn't take over the petrochemical plants to make solar panels, even if that's what some liberals have in mind. In March, five Democratic senators urged the President to use the DPA to "mirror the Lend-Lease Act program implemented during World War II, through which the United States sent essential supplies to allied nations invaded by Germany."
The DPA is becoming Biden's inexpensive home remedy. The constitutional risk is that the President increasingly uses emergency powers to instruct private industry to carry out his political orders. The economic risk is that the government misallocates resources and makes the US economy even less competitive.
(Extract from the press review of eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/biden-politica-industriale-energia/ on Sun, 12 Jun 2022 06:46:37 +0000.